April Madness--The Final Round!!

It's been a long, strange road to get here...

But we're finally at the Final Round of The Seven Justice Soldiers of The Victory League Society!! And, probably to no one's surprise, it is Team Superman...

...vs. Team Batman!!

Fair warning--there are no coincidental "Martha's" in this fight to cause an unlikely truce.

Superman makes the first move, grabbing Hourman and dropping him 61 minutes in the past, so his Miraclo will be worn off by the time the fight starts!!

And as Batman pulls out the inevitable piece of kryptonite, Metamorpho turns himself into a lead suit of armor encasing Kal-El, and together they show Batman that he's not quite ready to "defeat anyone if he has enough time" yet.

Sandman cold-cocks a powerless Hourman, and Metamorpho sneakily grabs Starman's Cosmic Rod, ending this little slugfest!!

So, our grand champion is...

...Team Superman!!

And it's all proven with irrefutable comic book logic!!

Thanks for putting up with this all week...

April Madness, 2nd Semifinal--Those Wonderful Toys!!

It's the second semifinal of The Seven Justice Soldiers Of The Victory League Society!!

Last time was pretty easy for....

Will they work up a bigger sweat against a lot of analysts' sleeper pick?

As the action begins, Batman pulls a device out of his belt, presses a button, and...and...

Oh dear heavens, Red Tornado has just turned into on OMAC!! Batman, who invented OMACs, has found a way to weaponize it to take over Red Tornado!!

Oh, god, the humanity!!! OMAC is just pummeling the living hell out of Zatanna and Flash!! This is brutal!! Team Batman is just sitting around watching....!!

And that's it!! Officials have called the fight!! Once again, Team Batman got maximum beatdown for minimum effort!!

Remember, we did warn you earlier the Red Tornado was potentially this team's Achilles heel--and we were right!!

Will tricks like that work against Team Superman, though? Turn in tomorrow morning for the riveting final!!

April Madness Round III--No, Seriously!!

It's time to continue our meaningless contest, The Seven Justice Soldiers of The Victory League Society!! Heroes fighting for no reason than my childish whim!! Bwahahahaha!!!

Ahem.

Anyway, this morning features the "__Man" group...

vs.

Seriously. They put Hal Jordan and Aquaman in the same group...against Batman?

This isn't much of a contest. Batman sits reading the Gotham Gazette while Hal trips and hits his head on a rock. Oh, Hal...

Meanwhile, while Aquaman desperately looks around for a fish to command, Starman zaps him with his Cosmic Rod. And as tough as Wildcat is, he can't take both Batman and Hourman. Battle's over.

Tune in later this morning for a much more interesting battle...

Manic Monday--The Adventures of The Canadian Hourman?

I bet you never knew that Rex Tyler was a Western hero!

No, not *that* Rex Tyler...

 This Rex Tyler:

What the hell?

Read our caption there...this is the Canadian Rex Tyler!!

Now, if you read that--"vast forces of outlawry still alive to this very day"--and just look at the guy, you're probably thinking that this a traditional Western comic.

Nope.

It's a 1947 Canadian comic book, set in modern times, when cars and everything were available. But everyone acts as if it's not post-WWII, and we're in ye olde West. Heroes camping out, with grizzled (and barely literate) sidekicks:

Everyone's riding horses:

And the bad guys are owlhoots wearing neckerchief masks who ambush you in the wilderness!

There's plenty of exciting gunplay and fisticuffs...

...and our plot is about bad people trying to seize a silver mine!

And our hero gets his reward under a full moon...

Aside from that car, there's no indication that this story didn't take place in 1878, as opposed to 1947.

Well, I guess if the 1980s didn't make it to Canada until 1993, I guess the Old West could stretch out a few decades longer than it did here, too...

Still, given the later machinations of time travel and whatnot, prove to me that this isn't the classic DC Rex Tyler trapped in the past for awhile...

From Red Seal Comics #22 (1947), as reprinted in Top Adventure Comics #2 (1958)

An Unwelcome Reminder: DC Hates Everything You Ever loved

Hey, you all remember Hour-Man, one of the earliest super-heroes, created 75 years ago this year, right?

And you remember how his son took up that mantle, becoming Hourman?

And you remember how that heroic legacy lived on, inspiring heroes for centuries to come?

Well, in case you had forgotten, this is the week that DC decided to shit all over that legacy:

DC: We hate our own characters so much, that we will continue to cover them with feces and turn them into your worst nightmares.

This is why it's a good thing that DC hasn't revived Johnny Thunder, no matter what I said yesterday. Because the nu52 Johnny Thunder would no doubt be juggling dead babies while violating nuns on the cover...

What The Surgeon General Tried To Hide From You!

There's a hidden secret to Jay Garrick's origin as the Golden Age Flash that people have managed to ignore/politely forget about over the years.

Young Jay is in for an all-nighter...

What?!?!

The pause that refreshes...!!

Of course, having your lungs full of tobacco smoke didn't help...

Still, I think it's undeniable--if he weren't a smoker, Jay Garrick never would have become the Flash!

Why do you think Thomas Wayne ducked down that alley? To catch a quick smoke on the way to the car!

Under that "gas mask"? Wesley Dodds was puffing away.

Super-soldier serum? 98% tobacco.

Bucky bursting in on Steve Rogers changing? He was looking to bum a smoke.

Tyler Pharmaceuticals? You know they sold tobacco. And the addictive chemical whose effects only lasted one hour? Nicotine.

Al Pratt? He was short because smoking stunted his growth.

It's undeniable--all Golden Age heroes owe their origin to tobacco!!

Bonus: health care 1940-style!

From Flash Comics #1 (1940)

Hasn't DC Run Out Of Heroes To Ruin Yet?

This solicit appeared yesterday:

 EARTH 2: SOCIETY #6
Written by DANIEL H. WILSON
Art and cover by JORGE JIMENEZ
On sale NOVEMBER 11 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The heroes of Earth-2 grow closer to discovering the real dangers that lurk in their new world as the murderous Hourman is revealed.

 What did that say again?

"...as the murderous Hourman is revealed."

Oh, now, that's just silly. A murderous Hourman?!? That could never...

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just when you thought DC had run out of characters they could break, they find another Golden Age icon to piss all over. Please, DC, turn some more of those WWII heroes you own into psychopaths and super-villains!!

Sorry if that traumatized you. Here's Hour-Man in happier days...

The Secret Origin Of Mighty (Hour) Mouse?!?

So, if you read this week's Friday Night Fight, you know something about the effect of Hourman's wonder drug, Miraclo, on animals.

But what you might not have known, is that Hourman started out testing the formula on animals...

See, this is a modern retelling of a Golden Age origin. So instead of developing the drug and immediately testing it on himself, like a true olde tyme scientist would, Rex Tyler is using lab rats. Well, a lab rat.

Rasputin? Oh, Rex, you don't name the test animals you're giving potentially deadly chemicals to!

But...

Here he comes to save the day!!

You know, Rasputin's probably still alive...his exposure to Miraclo (and the earlier versions that "didn't work") granting him rat immortality, enabling him to survive over the decades...wandering the globe, desperately seeking out more of the Miraclo, trying to feed the monkey that's been on his back for 80 years...gradually evolving into a larger, more human-looking form, to menace anyone who gets between him and his sweet, sweet drug. Rasputin, the rat who cannot die...

And once again we see why I'm not allowed to write comic books.

Meanwhile, Hourman gets more and more...problematic as time goes by. Illegal animal experimentation? Addictive performance-enhancing drugs? What's next, Rex--marketing Miraclo in Third World countries to test it? Falsifying data submitted to the FDA to get it approved? Wining and dining doctors to get them to prescribe it? No wonder the nu52 hasn't come anywhere near Hourman in the reboot...

From Secret Origins #16 (1987)

Friday Night Fights--Give A Hoot Style!!

It's time once again to defend my position as the number one Google result for "man-on-animal action."

Which means that, in this week's Friday Night Fights, we find out what happens when you give your pet performance enhancing drugs.

(Apologies for the presentation, but the damned Omnibus this is from is far too large for my scanner. So this involved some clever camera tricks, which still left the occasional bit of glare and distortion and off color. Sorry)

Hourman and Doctor Mid-Nite are investigating mysterious goings-on at a secret military base, when Rex discovers...

The only name we get for this guy is "Jensen." It turns out the base is a secret Allied research base developing germ warfare to use against the Nazis, and they've come up with some "liquid anthrax." And now Jensen has managed to absorb the power of the WMD.

And how does someone with the power of liquid anthrax fight?

Eeewwwww.

But it is effective:

Fortunately, Rex's super-duper pills seem to protect him from actual infection:

Doctor Mid-Nite, though, has no such protection...so he's stuck in a hazmat suit!

Ahh, but there's one more player--Mid-Nite's pet owl, Hootie!!

Noooooooo!!!!

But wait, gentle reader...

Oh, dear. Exactly what happens when you give a wounded owl half a dose of Miraclo?

This happens:

That had to hurt!!!

Spacebooger is just glad that I refrained from making any Hootie and The Blowfish jokes.

The owls are not what they seem in Smash Comics #1 (1999), as reprinted in JSA Omnibus Volume 1 (2014), by Tom Peyer, Stephen Sadowski, and Michael Bair

Now is the time for you to go and vote for my fight. Why? Man, I gave you an owl hopped up on goofballs whooping on a villain!! What more can you want?!? So give a hoot, read a book, and go and vote!!